The World Championship of Whiny Bitches: FIFA World Cup 2006
The World Cup has been drawing a lot of my interest lately, filling my mindspace with a veritable trove of celebrated players and wild speculations about the prospectve winners, and sending replays of inconcievable goals and near misses whizzing through the 8mm reel of my conciousness
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1) If anyone won the cup, it was Trinidad & Tobago. Other notably awesome teams include Ivory Coast, Mexico, and Australia. I'm speaking simply in terms of showing up, doing the damned best they could, and winning games they shouldn't have won, and having a good time doing it without being jackasses on the way there.
2) NO NO NO there can't be replays, no matter how instant. While casual/new/American fans tend to think that replays would be a good idea, real fans of soccer/soccer players almost universally disagree with this idea. Replays will not fix anything, they will only make soccer more like our "football" - slow, boring, stopping every few moments, etc. It can't possibly work. The whole idea of soccer is that the action doesn't stop unless someone gets wounded or if there's a penalty, and if anyone spends even a few seconds wasting time in a crucial part of the match they can get yellow carded for it. In fact, video replays had a huge part in today's game - they were directly responsible for Zidane being sent off. The ref didn't see the play, he heard about it much after the fact from his lineman, you can tell that he wasn't going to do anything at all until far after the play happened, and the lineman that told him about it was in a perfect viewing position to see the replay that was showed on the stadium's monitor. The call only came after the replay was shown, which is really a travesty for the whole idea that there should be no replays in soccer. Basically a) Zidane deserved a red card for what he did b) Zidane's act was most likely justifiable by the way the Italians had been playing all night, the way the ref reacted to the Italian's fouling of Zidane (by not calling any of it), and whatever it was that Materazzi said, and c) despite that he deserved the red card, he shouldn't have gotten it that far after the play, without any of the refs actually seeing it happen live (and I don't believe for a moment FIFA's insistence that the refs didn't see the replay). Although, given that, you make a good point with the "oldest trick in the book" angle - something that is explored to some extent in the article I link below.
And now for a little bit of input about "diving" - I wish people would just stop doing it. The thing is, it's hard for a ref to call it, because if someone dives it really doesn't seem like you should give them a yellow card for it, and often won't even give a foul (just let play continue, don't reward them by stopping play at all), whereas the target of the dive will often be given a card, because it just seems more obvious that you would penalize someone for fouling than for diving. This isn't a good thing, but I think it's just the natural tendency. I'd like to see harsher penalties for diving, even red cards if it's something persistent, but I don't think the cards will ever be there. It seems like it will always be a "rational" choice to try to dive, as it will result in an average net gain for your side, but it's dishonest and idiotic - and unfortunately that doesn't convince enough people. I've always wanted to like Italian soccer, but have hated that they take the amatuer's way out and dive all over the place. They have the capability to play an incredibly beautiful game of soccer and they squander it with their petty diva-ing.
I'll come out of this still respecting Zidane for his skill and even for his temperament - he doesn't dive, he is generally a happy player, but when people are being assholes to him for a very long time, he gets frustrated and acts out - I can see this type of temperament in myself from back when I used to play soccer/hockey (you wouldn't think it, knowing me, but I had a lot of penalty minutes when I played defense in hockey). I just wish that the last 15 minutes of that game hadn't happened, because nothing good came from them for either side.
Finally, I thought this was a good article: http://www.boston.com/sports/articles/2006/07/10/a_title_by_kick_or_by_trick?mode=PF
Yeah I spent little time thinking about what I put in this, cause it's really late, so probly none of it makes sense, but whatever.
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Now, I don't think it would be like American Football, which is slow by nature. In the NFL, the game is designed for the action to stop every few minutes.
Still, I think an amicable system between players, fans, referees, and the Gods of Fair Play could be reached. As you pointed out, the ref has his linemen -- they don't need to stop the action right away for the linemen to review potential penalties and then signal the head referee.
Imagine this scenario:
Lets say that the two venerable countries of Wahoolandia and the Doodeelee Republic are engaging in a game of football. The ref follows the action as the ball is passed upfield, downfield, midfield, and bounced to and fro off many a forehead. He only calls the really obvious stuff himself. If something is questionable, however, he presses a button on his wristwatch. Did the Wahoolandian midfielder really sucker punch the poor Doodeeleedian goalkeepr in cold blood, or was it just a trick of the light? Receiving the signal, sidekick reviews the video footage that is instantly piped down to his hi-def review-o-matic screen. The action continues, but moments later, the ref hears the nokia tune beeping away on his wristwatch and he blows the whistle. It was indeed a suckerpunch! And as the ref proudly holds up the red card, the offensive Wahoolandian bows his head in shame and shambles off the field.
The job of officiating a sports competition is an uncofortable mix of the subjective and objective. The ref is in constant danger: "favoritism" they might cry. And really, no one wants to see a match, especially a high profile world cup final, if it will be decided by a call from the referee. Much less if it is a dubious one.
It wouldn't be difficult to come up with a system in which
If this could happen (not simply a longshot, but what we might go so far as to call an indetermablydistantshot) then we would see a lot of things about the game improve. Players wouldn't TRY to elicit penalties out of the ref -- if they did it would be painfully obvious and they would probably get handed a penalty themselves. The game would get a good deal cleaner, and with less penalties being comitted (much less called) the action would actually be interrupted less often.
Perhaps the referee didn't see Zidane headbutting Materazzi -- but even if he saw the replay, he deserved the red card for such disgraceful behaviour. But who can say what would have happened if every penalty actually commited was called?
I don't think that a system which lets players get away with more bad behaviour is whats best for this particular tournament. It will only serve to make the Italian strategy the norm. And if nothing else, that would be a terrible shame.
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The other thing about Zidane deserving the red card is that the Italians probably deserved a yellow (or multiple yellows) for what they had been doing all game, with fouls and taunting and whatnot, and if this had all been replayed somehow then those yellows would have been given out and Zidane's red would have been unnecessary. But since all of the Italian business happened off the ball, including the holding and taunting that directly resulted in Zidane's headbutt, it didn't get called. Which is also why Zidane shouldn't have gotten a red card for what he did, whether he deserved it or not.
While nobody wants to see a game decided by a dubious call, I think far less soccer fans would like to see it decided by video review several minutes after the play happens. And there will *always* be dubious calls - the video replay system has definitely not eliminated these from American football. So might as well maintain the spirit of the game, and keep video replays out whatsoever.
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The lineman who did the -- lets call it video surveillance would be specially appointed to that task, not taken from one of the existing linemen. Also the review would happen within seconds, not minutes.
Expanding on the idea, suppose you had a particular special "video ref" to watch various sections of hte field, or various players. He could have live coverage of his particular quarry from five different angles, and instantly know if there had been a foul.
Expensive, yes, but the world cup generates millions if not more, so I don't think its neccesarily over the top. Especially when these kinds of tactics are being employed.
And you ARE right about the yellow cards. If something had happened to allow Zidane to release some steam the headbut would never have occured.
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